


For Better or Worse

by Brumeier



Series: Bite Sized Fic [38]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s05e16 Brain Storm, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 13:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6154684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>LJ Comment Fic for Quotes prompt: Stargate Atlantis, Rodney McKay/ John Sheppard, <i>“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.” </i><br/>― Marilyn Monroe</p><p>In which Rodney discusses the failure of his relationship with Jennifer, and John has a hard time owning up to his own feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Better or Worse

**Author's Note:**

> Mention of past Rodney/Jennifer.

Rodney sat out on the pier with a six pack of Molson and the night sky for company. He was glad to be back home, but exhausted from wrangling his latest epiphany. He wished the damn things had better timing.

The trip back to Earth had been frustrating. Well, he knew it would be before he even went, but the lure of Tunney’s mysterious scientific discovery had proven too strong for him to resist. The old competitiveness had risen up in him again, and he’d been helpless against it. Sure, he’d saved the day. Didn’t he always? But he’d lost something, too, and he still wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

He was four beers in when John found him. Rodney wordlessly handed him a can, then returned to leaning back on his arms and looking up at the constellations. The Pegasus night sky had become as familiar to him as the one he’d left behind.

“So,” John said after a while. “I hear you were a big damn hero.”

“Of course I was. Not that any of those gasbags appreciated it. I hope they’re still alive when my work eventually gets declassified. I’ll have them all eating their pocket protectors.” Rodney could picture it very well in his head, their stunned faces when they realized the amazing leaps he’d made in the field of Physics. Light years beyond what anyone else was doing. Not to mention all the galaxy saving.

“You can thank them in your Nobel speech,” John said with a chuckle.

Rodney cut him a quick glance. John was also looking up at the stars, and he was relaxed in a way he hadn’t been in a long time. They’d been friends long enough for Rodney to know, and he’d always paid extra attention to John anyway.

“I suppose you heard about Jennifer.”

“The Atlantis grapevine is alive and well.” John turned to look at him. “Sorry things didn’t work out.”

Rodney shrugged, looking away. “I saved her life, you know. A real masculine display, with an axe and everything.” He’d gone looking for surveillance tapes for proof, but of course the cameras in that section of the facility had been damaged by the freeze lightning. Just his luck.

“So what happened?”

“She told me she loved me.” Rodney sighed. “That’s when I knew she had to go.”

“Okay, I’m confused.” John set his beer down. “You broke up with her because she’s in love with you?”

“Oh, please. That was the near-death experience talking. You know, all she did was nag at me. ‘Be nice, Rodney.’ ‘Don’t say that, Rodney.’ She doesn’t really love me, I’m smart enough to know that. She loves this _idea_ of me she has, where I’m nice and polite and never make a scene.”

Rodney didn’t say what he was really thinking, which was that Jennifer had fallen for him when he was sick, when that parasite had sapped all the snark and ego out of him. She wasn’t a bad person. She just wasn’t the _right_ one. Not for him. And that had been a blow, because in every other way Jennifer was perfect: intelligent, pretty, capable. She’d looked great on his arm at Tunney’s shindig. 

“You shouldn’t be with someone who wants to change you,” John said, so quietly Rodney almost didn’t hear him. 

“No, I shouldn’t,” Rodney agreed. He could’ve left it at that, ignored the warmth of affection blooming in his chest, but the beer had loosened him up. “I have a lot to offer, you know, but I can’t share the best of me with anyone who can’t handle me at my worst. And I’m at my worst most of the time.”

That’s where the epiphany had come in, catching him right before he would’ve kissed Jennifer after her declaration. It could’ve been one of those defining relationship moments, if she hadn’t thrown his words back at him. _I love you. I have for some time now_. He didn’t remember a lot of what happened when he was losing his mind, but he’d watched the video. He’d made his own declarations, but he’d made them to just about everyone. For some reason Jennifer had attached a lot of significance to hers, believed it was more than just a child-like offering of affection.

Rodney could’ve run with it, maybe even been happy, but it had felt wrong. When Jennifer had moved in for a kiss, he’d moved back. And she’d known, right then, even though they hashed it out on the plane ride back to Colorado Springs. He’d seen it in her eyes.

“She blames you, you know,” Rodney said. He popped the top on the last beer.

“Why me?” And the tension was back, stiffening John’s shoulders. Rodney nodded, pleased. That bore out his hypothesis.

“She said she can’t compete with you.”

“That’s ridiculous.” John chugged the rest of his beer.

Rodney might have agreed with him, except that Jennifer was right. There wasn’t a man or woman alive that could compete with John Sheppard, not in Rodney’s life anyway. John challenged him, supported him, and never once asked him to be something he wasn’t. Rodney had watched the video. John was the one person he never forgot.

“It’s not so ridiculous.”

John looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and Rodney idly wondered if his pointy ears were turning pink. They did that sometimes, when he was nervous or embarrassed.

“Rodney –”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever entertained the idea of being with a man,” Rodney said conversationally. “But if you ever do, I’m just letting you know that I would like to be that man.”

He’d definitely had too much beer. But he’d long had his suspicions about John, and the way John might feel about him. They spent enough time together that Rodney thought he could read the man pretty well by now.

“You’re obviously drunk if you’re asking me to be your rebound guy.” John sounded angry, and his hands were all fisted up.

“I’m not drunk. Pleasantly buzzed. And you’re no rebound guy, you idiot. You’re the only one I ever wanted, I just wasn’t sure I could have you.”

“And what makes you so sure now?”

“Because you’re still here.” Still there, after Doranda and the matter bridge and the nanites. He’d forgiven Rodney’s every mistake, gave him the opportunity to make amends. He’d _killed_ for Rodney, because convincing Henry Wallace to sacrifice himself to a Wraith was nothing short of murder. “Because what we do for each other is deeper than friendship. Jennifer could never be what you are to me. And that’s not the Molson speaking, just so you know. I _am_ capable of complex emotional thinking when the occasion warrants it.”

John huffed out a laugh, but he was still holding himself pretty stiffly. “You married her, you know. In the other timeline. You were happy.”

“No, I wasn’t.” Rodney hadn’t been there, of course. But he’d read John’s report, cornered him a time or two to talk about his experience in the far-flung future. “If I was, I wouldn’t have spent a lifetime figuring out a way to bring you back. I’d have mourned you, mourned our friends, and moved on. I’m not a sentimental person, you know that. But even that other me couldn’t stand a life without you in it.”

Those seemed to be the right words to say, because suddenly John was pressed up against him, kissing him as if his life depended on it, and judging by the broken sounds he was making it just might. Rodney wrapped his arms around John and kissed him back, giving him what he could never have given Jennifer: love in its purest form, without conditions or doubts.

John pulled back, but only far enough that he could rest his forehead on Rodney’s. “I’d like you to be that man, too,” he said, his voice ragged.

For better or worse, Rodney thought, and captured John’s lips for another kiss.


End file.
